Tradition versus Modernism in Zoya Pirzad’s Novels

One of the most prominent issues challenging today’s society is tradition versus modernity. It is considered as a social issue in literature, especially in novels. Zoya Pirzad is one of the Iranian women writers who has noticed this confrontation in her works, especially in her two novels; I Will Turn Off the Light and We will Get Used to It. This study has intended to firstly define tradition and modernism and their characteristics and then investigated the reflection of tradition and modernism regarding the two aforementioned novels by Zoya Pirzad through a descriptive-analytical approach. According to the results, the writer has attempted to illustrate a society in which modernity has caused the decline of tradition based on women heroines she has depicted. Instances of tradition versus modernity in Zoya Pirzad’s novels are: social rights and freedom of women, modern lifestyle, marriage, human loneliness, love between men and women, challenging patriarchal traditional perspectives, emerging forbidden love, women superiority to men, confrontation of characters and traditional or modern generations. Nevertheless in several instances, modernism attributes such as: consumerism, opulence and getting overinvolved in urban daily lives are criticized.